I recently reviewed Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic’s Storytelling with data, as a result the Storytelling team sent me a (pre-publication) copy of their latest book, Storytelling with Data – Before and After by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Mike Cisneros and Alex Velez. It is scheduled for publication on 15th September 2025.
I must admit my first thought on receiving this book was “Can one have too many Storytelling with data books?” On the basis of this one I can say it would appear not!
Sadly, Daphne the data visualisation dragon, from Knaflic’s book Daphne Draws Data, is missing. The presentation is rather more austere, that said all of Storytelling with data books are beautifully produced.
The book is comprised of 20 “before and after” chapters showing a visualisation before the Storytelling treatment and the after of the visualisation after the treatment. There is some material at the beginning and end of this set of chapters. The preamble is a quick sketch of the elements of the Storytelling with data method which is to think of a data visualisation / presentation as a story and craft it accordingly.
The chapter at the end of the book talks about personal development for the reader and how this fits with the workplace. This touches on the material in Storytelling with you which talks about data presentations as a performance.
Each of the “before and after” chapters focuses on one element of the Storytelling with data scheme, and is written by one of the three authors. I like that the individual authors are identified with each chapter. Each author has a style but they are all good and they get an equal share of the chapter pie.
I think this format is a great choice, I found in earlier Storytelling books that talking through an example made clear more abstract ideas – when I’m setting out on some new technology I always look for an example close to what I want.
The before and after format is well suited to the core “narrative arc” of Storytelling with data. There’s the “background” – the context whose flaws are revealed by a “rising action” of highlighting its many deficiencies reaching a “climax” followed by a “falling action” as those deficiencies are resolved; ending with the “resolution” of the “after” presentation.
The examples used are from real engagements with customers but anonymised, covering a range of topics but generally around marketing. Many of the “before” visualisations struck a chord with me, they are so familiar from my working life. The key issue with them is that they try to fit too much in to too small a space. Their formats cover presentations, dashboards, periodic reports and in one case an email report.
The Storytelling method is fairly light on prescriptions for charts, it tends to stick to simpler chart types – often bar charts or dot plots (which are tricky to achieve in Excel, but there are links to guidance on this). The main advice is decluttering, taking out all the chart elements that don’t support your message.
One trick I learnt from earlier books is to title slides with the take home message rather than a broad description: “Results” is replaced with “Sales are up in the North West region”. This type of change is quick and easy to do, in fact one chapter talks specifically about the sorts of changes you can implement in 5 minutes, 15 minutes and 1 hour – I found this really handy.
I liked the chapter Draw Attention to What Matters this invites the reader to record where their eyes are drawn and in what order – in the initial example the author highlights a truncated logo and company logo – definitely not the intention. You may have seen this visualisation on how your attention can be utterly predictable.
In the final before and after chapter, Weaving it all Together, Knaflic talks about changing your mindset from informing to influencing. Ultimately you know the data best, and it is for you to recommend a course of action based on the data. Part of this is about understanding, and speaking to the interests of your audience.
As I read I realised a key deficit for me was seeing how to execute the transformations that Storytelling suggests in my favoured data visualisation software (Excel, Tableau and PowerPoint). Fortunately the team have that covered, there is the Storytelling with data: Let’s Practice book by Knaflic which I haven’t read and the Storytelling with data website has additional material on technical specifics as well as a community with data visualisation challenges.
In summary, I don’t think you can have too many Storytelling with data books – this one is great for those who like learning by example.